TMW turns Dragons' Den

Competing teams of young business professionals. 48 hours to answer a creative brief set by an ad agency. The culmination of some crazy product ideas and slick presentations.

Not The Apprentice but the summer challenge for the IDM Diploma in Direct & Digital Marketing set by TMW this week. Though to be honest, the ideas for a new meat snack were so amazing, it felt more like Dragons’ Den than Lord Sugar’s lot. And had I had the cash I would have certainly been handing some of it over.

In essence, we set the three teams a strategic challenge that most agencies (and some pretty big digital platforms) are grappling with these days. The hot potato that is the effectiveness of social media. To give them something to hang their thinking around we gave them the creative challenge of launching a new meat based snack via social media in a way that could be tracked. Oh and just to spice it up a bit, we gave them two days to crack it.

And boy did they have a go! From Just Jerky to Saucy Sanchez, we were wowed by two new products aimed at the active urbanite. But, with my director of innovation hat on, I was blown away by Holy Elephant’s (Team 2) game-changing idea of using science pioneered by the army to launch the first snacks available in packaging that heats up the product while still in the bag. Under the creative positioning, ‘Bring out the caveman in you,’ it really got me reaching for my wad of cash. And spear. Amazing.

And as for how they would track and measure effectiveness, well, that’s still underway. Suffice to say, all indications so far suggest that, coached by the likes of DM guru Brian Thomas and the IDM, the future of marketing is safe in the hands of the next generation.